Understanding Digital Black and White Photography

Art and Techniques

Tim Savage

• Publisher: Crowood
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781785001987
• Topic: Medios de comunicación y artes escénicas
• Subtopic: Medios digitales

Black and white photography can deliver images with levels of beauty and impact that are sometimes lost or diluted by the presence of colour. This practical book is written for readers with a passion for monochrome photography, who wish to use digital photography to match and exceed the level of control and finish that was possible with film. With visual examples throughout, it systematically teaches skills that underpin photographic creativity, from capture to digital development, before considering a range of outputs and finishes. Contents include: photographic equipment, camera settings, exposure parameters and file composition (bit depth, colour space resolution); editing software, notably the key features of Lightroom and Photoshop dedicated to black and white photography; using HDR techniques to maximise tonal information while recreating Ansel Adam's analogue Zone System approach using digital technologies; simulating traditional darkroom techniques by emulating the appearance and characteristics of popular films, toning techniques, adding edges, borders and dodging and burning; outputting monochrome photographs for publication online, social media, screen, projection and high quality archival prints suited to exhibitions. This book will help the reader understand the principles of digital black and white photography to create powerful images with the quality of traditional darkroom practices, and is aimed at all photographers - particularly artistic. Fully illustrated with 291 images - many are black & white with a few colour to demonstrate the loss of impact that colour can have.

Chapter 1

An Introduction to Digital Black and White Photography

Not all that long ago black and white was the only option available to photographers. The traditional monochrome workflow is a slow process requiring the selection of film stock, skilled metering, determining shutter speed, aperture and ISO and focusing the lens manually in advance of exposing the film carefully. Variations in chemistry, dilution ratios and temperatures are used to develop the film with due regard for the appearance of highlights, shadows and contrast. The resulting negatives are then printed in a darkened room under red light on to a range of different paper types and finishes. By contrast, digital cameras, computers and printing technologies can appear a great deal simpler, offering a plethora of options by comparison. Today, making black and white photographs is a preference rather than an aesthetic enforced by the recording medium. Despite advances in technology the impact of black and white sometimes becomes lost in the digital world. Images viewed on screen lack physical authenticity while inkjet prints can appear flat, lifeless and dull when compared with the rich deep blacks offered by traditional darkroom printing. This book is written for readers with a passion for monochrome photography and a desire to match and exceed the level of control and quality of what was possible with film using a digital workflow.

This chapter covers:

• A guide to reading this book

• Why make black and white photographs?

• Finding inspiration

• Identifying qualities and sources of light

• Identifying imaging traits suited to black and white

• Portraiture

• Documentary photography and photojournalism

• Events

• Landscapes

• Buildings and architecture

• Objects and still life

• The body and the nude

• Snapshots

A GUIDE TO READING THIS BOOK

Before exploring the photographic processes it is helpful to clarify the terminology. The term ‘black and white’ is well used and most people will be familiar with what is meant by the phrase. However, in the strictest sense very few photographs contain just black and white. In the vast majority of cases images referred to as black and white also contain shades of grey. Black and white images can be also be warmed, cooled, tinted or take on a hue when treated with sepia or selenium effects. A further point to note is that when working digitally, although a black and white image appears devoid of colour, the image is actually constructed of red, green and blue pixel values. The term monochrome (meaning any other colour and white) is a more accurate way to refer to the photography that this book describes.

The chapter sequence has been written to mirror the natural workflow of a photographer and takes a holistic overview, describing the visualization of images, shooting, editing, printing and outputting for a range of outcomes. This begins by encouraging the reader to imagine their own preferred photographic outcomes in advance of shooting and considering how scenes and subjects may be rendered in black and white. The tools and techniques described are transferable and, regardless of whether you specialize in portraiture, landscapes, wildlife, still life, street photography and so on, the general principles can be applied to any subject or genre. Beyond inspiration, visualization and theory, this book considers black and white photography through four distinct sections: production, processing, finishing and output.

PRODUCTION

Chapters 3 to 5 describe the planning and image capture stages of a typical black and white workflow. These chapters describe photographic equipment (cameras, lenses, computers, monitors, scanners and printers). Choice and functions of cameras are considered in greater depth, which informs discussion regarding exposure and camera settings. Camera modes, options and menus are explored in relation to the black and white process, with an emphasis on capturing the highest quality data to ensure the maximum tonal reproduction. Chapter 5 considers how a black and white photograph exists as data and how tone is recorded and described by the camera using the histogram.

PROCESSING

Chapters 6 to 8 describe the digital processing stage. Having captured an image the data must be converted from a colour photograph into a range of greys using software. Adobe Lightroom is the hub of the processing workflow, though other specialist applications can be used to fine tune or automate aspects of the processing stages. This stage encourages photographers to identify and develop their own workflows and establish a suitable software sequence to achieve an end goal. Once the general exposure processing and colour to monochrome conversion has been achieved, the finer aspects of image processing such as contrast, sharpening, and noise reduction are explored using black and white examples.

FINISHING

Chapters 9 to 12 describe finishing tools that allow finer image adjustments. Photoshop is introduced as the primary finishing tool, providing non-destructive technical adjustments in granular detail, using tools such as Levels, Curves as Adjustment Layers, and employing digital techniques to replicate a range of traditional darkroom tools including dodging, burning, simulating film grain, adding a vignette, applying borders and digital toning. To extend tonal range, monochromatic high dynamic range photography is described in the context of increasing the tonal possibilities for a subject or scene that is extended to include a digital interpretation of Ansel Adams’s Zone System for black and white photography.

OUTPUT

Chapters 13 and 14 describe options for outputting the finished image to screen (web, social media or screen-based exhibition) and printing. The print output is explored in full, introducing different types of printers, and comparing print drivers, paper profiles, soft proofing, paper types and consideration of archival issues. An overview of using commercial labs for exhibition quality images is also described.

WHY MAKE BLACK AND WHITE PHOTOGRAPHS?

If not already drawn to the appeal of the medium you may be forgiven for questioning why anyone would wish to produce black and white images at all? Responses vary, usually dependent on the age and experience of the photographer. More seasoned photographers who remember using manual SLRs to expose film before developing and printing in darkrooms tend to prize the craft aspect of black and white photography, recalling a fond nostalgia for the process, espousing analogue values and heralding the greater value of a wet print. Readers with this background may hold aspirations to recapture the qualities that appeared to be lost as photography became digital. The second group are younger photographers who have grown up with digital photography as their norm and who are more likely to view black and white photography as an alternative aesthetic that can be applied via digital filters or using apps such as Instagram. That said, analogue film remains very much alive. A 2015 worldwide survey by Ilford identified that around a third of photographers who shoot and develop film are under thirty-five years old, 98 per cent of whom are making black and white photographs^*. Increasing numbers of young people are approaching the black and white learning curve in reverse. Armed with knowledge of digital processes, these younger photographers are engaging increasingly with chemistry, film and darkrooms. Part of the appeal of an analogue approach to black and white is the slower pace. Working digitally there is a temptation to shoot many more frames than if exposing film. Training yourself to visualize how a scene will appear in black and white and then concentrating on framing, timing and capturing the full range of tones results while exposing, invariably creates better results that the ‘spray and pray’ approach of filling the memory card and worrying about converting to black and white later.

The history of photography is celebrated for its black and white masters. Epoch-defining images have been created in the medium by some of the world’s most established and respected photographers. Those seeking the finest quality images to inspire their own work should consider researching the work of Ansel Adams, Diane Arbus, Richard Avedon, David Bailey, Bill Brandt, Robert Capa, Bob Carlos-Clarke, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Dorothea Lange, László Moholy-Nagy, Sally Mann, Robert Mapplethorpe, Don McCullen, Helmut Newton, Irving Penn, Man Ray, Herb Ritts, Alfred Steiglitz and Edward Weston, to name but a few. Several of these practitioners contributed to the development of photographic techniques still in use today through their iconic work. For the majority of these famous names, using the black and white format was not a preference; it was enforced by technology available to them at the time. Many of these photographers lived through the technological film shift, which offered colour as an option, and rejected it in favour of maintaining their monochrome output. Today, many contempora...